


Immortal Words

by liseraptorknight



Category: Cosmere - Brandon Sanderson, SANDERSON Brandon - Works, Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 16:50:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5056327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liseraptorknight/pseuds/liseraptorknight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elhokar finally steps up to the plate and takes the oath of Knight Radiant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Immortal Words

“All we require is a truth, one simple truth.”

“A truth?” Elhokar looked up at the creatures in confusion.

“Yes,” one of them replied. It was not a reply, but a suggestion of one.

He took a deep breath.  A truth? Which one? Why were they the ones asking? They had been lurking around him for years, why would they need a truth when they doubtless possessed enough truths about him?

“The greater the truth, the more we can do,” another offered.

A truth… why did telling one seem so difficult.  He thought he was honest, but now, he could hear his father’s voice in his head in harmony with so many others. _Liar. Liar. Coward. Honorless._

“I…” he began, running a hand through his hair. “I hate my uncle… not hate, but resent him.  He is- everything I think I am but I am not.   That night, the night my father died, I blamed my uncle. He slept at a table, drunk while his brother died. He should have been there. It should have been him. I spent the past seven years quietly blaming my uncle for everything. I blamed him when the highprinces stepped out of line or questioned me.  I blamed him for the shadows haunting my footsteps.  I wanted him dead, but I did not at the same time.  He outshone- outshines me, my uncle. I like to think I am honorable and that I am a good man, a good father, a good king.  

The truth of the matter is this- I failed.  I sent an innocent man to die in prison for the sake of a few political alliances.  I condemned innocent men to die in a war of senseless retribution.  I stood by and did nothing while the highprinces and brightlords traded in human lives and then cast them aside.  I turned a blind eye to the suffering of my people.  There famines ravage Alethkar because my armies require much and I cared not for the usurious taxes brightlords charge. I am not a father to my son or a husband to my wife. They do not know me and I do not know them.  The are well within their rights to hate and to resent me.  I am not brave. I am vainglorious and foolhardy.  No, I am the worst of cowards, a man who pays lip-service to high ideals and does nothing. I remain silent when I should speak and speak when I should remain silent.  I yield to my passions and desires over self-sacrifice.”

The figures were silent.  One of them turned to the other, symbol flickering back and forth in a dizzying array of shapes coiling impossibly about each other.

“Fractals,” Jasnah’s voice whispered in the back of his mind. “A mathematical pattern which looks the same no matter how near or far away your viewpoint is. Curling around itself in infinite permutation with no beginning and no end.  Plants grow like fractals, branching out from one shape into smaller version of the same.”  

Elhokar took a deep breath and leaned against his desk. “I gave you your truth,” he said. _Leave._

“Obviously.” A hint of vague amusement.

“I gave you a truth, now give me one as well.” He stood up straight. Time to be king.

“We have many.” Again, the amusement, like a man watching axehound pups stagger about for the first time.

“What do you want of me? It cannot just be a truth. You have dogged my steps for as long as my memory reaches. I saw you in mirrors and in puddles and out of the corner of my eyes.”

“Come and see,” they said and the world went black.

He found himself standing on an endless sea of glass above which burned hundreds of small flames.  The creatures were still around him, robes fluttering in an unseen breeze. The clouds barred the evening sky in parallel, racing off into the horizon. Jasnah told him of this place, Shadesmar or as the Shin called it, World-Between-Worlds. Everything in this place, she told him, was the true form of things in the physical world. Every bead a single object and every flame a life.  So many of them here, burning.  He must have been a candle to these things and they followed him like flamespren.

“This is the place,” one of the creatures said. “This is the place where the world’s meet and it is here that you must decide.”

“Decide what?” Elhokar asked.

“To speak truths,” they said as one. “To speak the Immortal Words once more.”

The words, the Immortal Words, how often had he heard his uncle speak them. They tumbled out of his mouth like light streaming through a break in the clouds. “Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination.”

A sense of deep peace washed over his shoulders and the sea of glass vanished. He stood in his own room, looking out the window towards the dawn.  The spheres in the lamps were dull and empty of stormlight. Elhokar sat down at his desk and took out a pen.  In the corner of his eye, a piece of fern curled around itself in endless permutations.


End file.
